Saturday, August 15, 2009

Who's Un-American?

In one sense, I halfway agree with Nancy Pelosi. Screaming or shouting down politicians or fellow citizens in a public forum isn’t exactly productive. Yet I also agree with Thomas Jefferson, who wrote that “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” In my lifetime, I can’t recall our politicians ever really fearing the people. This past week is about the closest to genuine trepidation by our ruling class that I’ve ever witnessed, and a recent poll suggests that independent voters have more sympathy for the protesters than the politicians. Unless Jefferson was secretly born in Kenya, Pelosi is dead wrong. The seething rage we are seeing at the grassroots, even in its angriest expressions, is quintessentially American.

Pelosi’s liberal elitism was shared by her media comrades in full this week. When a man carrying a legal firearm showed up at a New Hampshire town hall where Obama was speaking, his mere presence made headlines. When this gentleman, William Kosteric appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, the host asked, almost in amazement, why he was there, why he was carrying a gun, if he was a “birther” and Matthews even cursed at his guest. Kosteric explained that he believed in the 2nd amendment, wondered why more people didn’t carry guns, believed both political parties were guilty of taking away liberties and even voted for Ron Paul for president. As Matthews looked on in disgust, I actually disagreed little with Kosteric.

At a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania, the clip of an angry, older man played as a constant loop on cable news outlets and still shots of this man surrounded by police were featured in many major newspapers. If one watched the entire video, you could see that another individual, presumably an Obama supporter, had attempted to forcibly seat the man of so much focus, who has since become the personification of what the Drudge Report called “American Anger.” The police were there seemingly to separate the two citizens, not restrain the man asking questions. But you would have never known this from most of the coverage.